Every beginning has an end
It seems like it was only the other day when I wrote the post about leaving the Evangelism team.
But, a lot has happened in the two years since then. We bought a piece of land and built a house. The kids are both in school full-time. My wife has a job that she loves.
Working from home has enabled some hugely significant changes in our lives. It vastly simplified the process of my wife getting a job. We don’t have to wonder about after-school care for our kids. My relationship with my kids has drastically changed, too. I’m no longer the guy they see for an hour or two in the morning and an hour or two in the evening. Our family life has become radically different from how it used to be, and all for the better.
However, working from home has also had its costs. For one, Apple is not really built to accommodate employees who work from home; there’s understandably a huge amount of inertia around the “everyone in the same office” mentality. A few teams are experimenting with trying to change this, but this kind of progress takes time.
Additionally, there are other costs that come with working at Apple. I can’t put my own apps on the store. I can’t speak at conferences. I can’t be an involved, vocal member of the open source developer community. I can’t do my own stuff on the side. When you’re working in Cupertino, these restrictions aren’t so bad. When you work from home, they chafe.
So, after seven years working at the mothership, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to move on. My last day is the 16th. I’ll take a very short break, and then start a new job at Snapchat on the 23rd. They’re opening a new R&D office a couple miles down the road from me, and I’m excited to help get it off the ground.
I’m also really excited to openly participate in the dev community again. I’ve got some Swift-Evolution ideas I want to propose, and I’m also thrilled to be speaking at the Swift by Northwest conference in Seattle at the end of the month.
It’s been the experience of a lifetime working for Apple. I’ve been able to be a part of something that I barely dared to dream of as a kid and a teenager, and it’s not anything I’ll ever forget.